Spook

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Posts by Spook

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  68

  25% of the World is Muslim?

  by leavingwt in

  1. social
  2. current

  wtf?.

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8296200.stm.

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  Spook

  Profiling is one of the most important things a person can do to gain insight about causes and effects which actually transpire in the real world.
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  46

  Need to make my home worth less. Any tips?

  by wouldacouldashoulda in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i am getting divorced and need to give my wife 50% of the equity in my home despite her not working (despite being told to) and having no kids.. .

  time for payback.. .

  i want tips on how to devalue my home when the agents come visiting.. .

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  Spook

  I don't know the story, so I won't automatically side with your soon-to-be-ex-wife, and also I think divorce laws tend to be biased against men, so I'll toss the dice.

  The new appraisal environment is not open to much wiggle room. Short of actually doing easily repairable damage (break windows, remove elements that can be taken out, etc.) all you can really do is challenge the comparable properties used to derive your homes value. Be careful, the other posters are wrong! Cosmetic damage does not overly impact the appraisal of a home (dirt, debris, minor damage are all largely IGNORED!!!)

  If you are going to have to sell your house, this will work against you. You should get an independant appraisal if you feel the value is unfairly high. Appraisers can be swayed - you at least want one who is going to be fare, one who is not IN THE POCKET OF YOUR WIFE'S ATTORNEY!

  YOUR lawyer should challenge the appraisal with another official appraisal. If you don't have one, get a lawyer TODAY, the best one you can afford.

  In divorce, the best case is to agree on a plan both parties find fair. This rarely happens and you are legally entitled to defend your rights and your concept of what you think is fair. If you don't, you could get royally screwed in this environment and wind up paying 50% on a value WELL above what you could actually sell it for.
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  97

  Satan and demons...? To any who believe in them.

  by angel eyes in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  any of you who believe in satan or demons, have you had experiences with them?.

  have you ever seen satan?.

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  Spook

  This is a perfect point for fundie idiots:

  If I had reason to believe spirits existed, I'd be a theist - not an atheist. There is no reason to believe this - not the "witches", not ouija boards, not mediums, not fortune tellers, not voodoo, not psychics, not ghosts, not heavy metal. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.

  Why instill fear of foolish party tricks, charlatans, fakes and frauds? Because fear is useful! That's why.

  Why do all "demons" respond so well to prescription medication?
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  8

  A Serious Conflict of Interest

  by OnTheWayOut in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  if you work for a bureaucratic corporation, when you have a serious problem, such as an addiction, you generally don't go up to your employer and tell him about it first.

  if it effects your work, you may go to the union representative.

  you probably go to your doctor or minister or a friend to help you.

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  Spook

  My experience with elders was thankfully that they try to be better than the society. My cong had a bunch of good guys. Unfortunately, the district though we were getting a little uppity and assigned some whack-jobs over. The party ended.
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  97

  Satan and demons...? To any who believe in them.

  by angel eyes in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  any of you who believe in satan or demons, have you had experiences with them?.

  have you ever seen satan?.

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  Spook

  Spook: the contradiction you point to exists only because JWs ignore the Jewish literary background of the NT, especially Enochian literature. From the book of Jubilees, for instance, it is very clear that the "evil spirits" (who cause illness etc. like in the Synoptic Gospels or Acts) are not the "fallen angels" who interbred with women and were "abyssed" (by Jude and 2 Peter) but the spirits of their dead progeny (Nephilim or Giants) -- only one tenth of which were let loose according to the Jubilees version of the story.

  Yes. That's not all they ignore. They also ignore medical literature and the fact that only people who believe demons exist seem to have experiences with them. Others have experience with aliens, but JW's don't. Anthropology is fascinating.

  JW's could have a consistant theology on this point if they just said that demon posession is a mental disorder - but then they couldn't use the fear. They further cannot utilize the theology above because they believe - unlike the authors of some of the bible books - that people do not have souls (but they do have spirits...RIGHT.)

  What's more fun, pop stories of ouija boards scaring people about party games, or scientific articles about subtle motor functions of the brain?

  I've never gotten a JW to explain to me why they accept the protestant cannon.
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  97

  Satan and demons...? To any who believe in them.

  by angel eyes in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  any of you who believe in satan or demons, have you had experiences with them?.

  have you ever seen satan?.

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  Spook

  You may find slim responses. By the way, since Jehovah's Witnesses believe...

  1. Demons are locked away in Tartarus (whatever that is) and unable to directly materialize in the world.

  2. Able to inhabit, impact, effect animate material objects.

  How do you reconcile that contradiction?

  By what means do they do so?

  How would one distinguish demon posession from mental illness?

  Do natural explanations of claimed demonic posessions constitute evidence against the hypothesis that such creatures exist?

  Spook - who believes anyone who has experienced a demon has actually experienced a psychotic episode.
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  318

  IRAN-Deja vu all over again?

  by JWdaughter in

  1. social
  2. current

  any of the rhetoric, demands, conciliation, etc., etc., remind you of anything?

  wasn't this all how this war started in iraq?

  (or the justification for it, anyway?

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  Spook

  Hitchens said it best: Some day we will hear from the democratic activists in Iran. What do you think they will say?

  H e sets it up with these observations:

  1. There is nothing at all that any Western country can do to avoid the charge of intervening in Iran's foreign affairs. The deep belief that everything--especially anything in English--is already and by definition an intervention is part of the very identity and ideology of the theocracy.

  2. It is a mistake to assume that the ayatollahs, cynical and corrupt as they may be, are acting rationally. They are frequently in the grip of archaic beliefs and fears that would make a stupefied medieval European peasant seem mentally sturdy and resourceful by comparison.

  3. The tendency of outside media to check the temperature of the clerics, rather than consult the writers and poets of the country, shows our own cultural backwardness in regrettably sharp relief. Anyone who had been reading Pezeshkzad and Nafisi, or talking to their students and readers in Tabriz and Esfahan and Mashad, would have been able to avoid the awful embarrassment by which everything that has occurred on the streets of Iran during recent days has come as one surprise after another to most of our uncultured "experts."

  And he brings it home with this:

  That last observation also applies to the Obama administration. Want to take a noninterventionist position? All right, then, take a noninterventionist position. This would mean not referring to Khamenei in fawning tones as the supreme leader and not calling Iran itself by the tyrannical title of "the Islamic republic." But be aware that nothing will stop the theocrats from slandering you for interfering anyway. Also try to bear in mind that one day you will have to face the young Iranian democrats who risked their all in the battle and explain to them just what you were doing when they were being beaten and gassed. [emphasis mine].

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n-STlCzn8s
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  48

  MY FIRST DOUBT

  by goldensky in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  dear all,.

  i posted my first thread a few days ago and some of you asked me questions i'm more than willing to answer.

  but there is so much i want to say to you there's no way i can convey all the information at one sitting, so i've decided to tackle one subject at a time, both for the sake of not boring you and because i'd love to know how you feel about each individual topic.

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  Spook

  It seems to me that the only effort at "consensus" which works is that God is good, and whatever he wants at any given time is good because he wants it to be so. This doesn't work with most theologies.

  The bible is not open to consensus.
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  29

  How Jehovah's Witnesses Control Your Mind - Controlling Your View of Truth

  by flipper in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  for those of you, newbies or perhaps others who haven't read steve hassan's book - " combatting cult mind control" here are some very important things to remember of how jehovah's witnesses and other " mind control" cults operate .

  it may help you to understand some things to see how we were all faked out at one time in our lives.

  hassan's book states , " in totalistic cults , the ideology is internalized as " the truth ", the only "map" of reality .

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  Spook

  I've become a skeptic, a moderate, and try not to get too bent out of shape about anything. I like primary sources and can sniff out bias on both sides of an issue in a flash.

  I recommend Cialdini's book INFLUENCE. It's phenomenal. Also, read some books about logic.
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  17

  What Inventions Helped the JW's Recruitment Ministry

  by OnTheWayOut in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  on a thread called stupidest jw meeting answers, here was an answer by dissed:.

  i don't remember other's stupid comments, just mine.. a co asked us during his service talk about inventions that have helped us in the ministry?.

  several answers came forth, then i raised my hand and said.

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  Spook

  The Lawsuit.